


It's Not Looking Great

by Mizuphae



Series: Whumptober [3]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics), Red Robin (Comics), Young Justice - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Character Death, Core Four, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Tim Drake, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kon-El | Conner Kent Needs a Hug, Kon-El | Conner Kent-centric, M/M, No. 31: Left For Dead, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, Tim Drake Whump, Tim Drake is Red Robin, Tim Drake-centric, Whumptober, Whumptober 2020, oops i did it again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:55:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27299035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mizuphae/pseuds/Mizuphae
Summary: Somebody is hurting Tim, and Kon can’t find him, nevermindsavehim.
Relationships: Bart Allen & Tim Drake & Kon-El | Conner Kent & Cassie Sandsmark, Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent
Series: Whumptober [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1972159
Comments: 11
Kudos: 99
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	It's Not Looking Great

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween, everyone! And if it's not Halloween for you/you don't celebrate it... I hope you're having an awesome day, anyway!
> 
> Shout out to my lovely betas: kitcat, robinlikeitshot, and TheFairMaidenofFandom! Y'all rock!
> 
> Enjoy this pile of angst!

“I can’t find him, guys,” Kon muttered into his comm.

He could hear Tim, dammit. He could fucking hear Tim grit his teeth and muffle his screams. He could hear his flesh being slashed open by whatever torturer is on shift, knives coated in varying acids (and he only knows this because he heard the asshole of the hour gleefully explain in full detail exactly what he was going to do to Tim). If he concentrated hard enough, he could hear Tim’s tears fall and splash onto the ground beneath him. He could hear Tim holding back sobs, muttering their names like a prayer, _Kon, Bart, Cassie, please_.

All three of them were in the same building as Tim, yet no one knew where he was. While Cassie and Bart finished the mission, Kon was supposed to rescue Tim. But he can’t fucking _find_ him because the supervillain had thought ahead and made some sort of device that redirected noises in different directions so it felt like it was all swarming around in his head. 

“Still?” Cassie hissed through the comm. “Shit. I need to—” 

“Need to what?” Bart asked, alarmed.

Loud bangs sounded from the comm, and Kon momentarily shifted his focus from Tim to the more immediate problem of what was happening on Cassie’s end. 

“Wondergirl!”

“I’m,” she grunted. “I’m fine. I’m fine.” 

He heard a satisfying slam. “That you?”

“Yeah,” she exhaled. “All good. Some guys just tried to get the jump on me.”

“You punched the shit out of them?”

“Hell yeah.” Kon could hear the grin in her voice. “It all worked out.”

Kon was silently hovering through the halls when he faintly heard Tim croak, “Fuck you.” His head whipped around frantically, looking for any possible directions Tim could possibly be in.

“Red Robin? Baby?” 

“Rob?” Bart asked in Kon’s ear, his voice high with hope. “You see him?”

“No.” Kon shook his head in frustration, . “I just heard him talk to someone for the first time in a while, but I still don’t know where he is.”

“Oh.” Bart’s voice sounded so unbearably disappointed and Kon felt a surge of guilt. “How did he sound?”

“Not… not good.”

“Like not good, not good?” Bart asked anxiously. “Really, really not good? What do you think they did to him?”

Kon was silent before he said, “I gotta…” Kon’s chest felt tight as he spoke, a lump in his throat. “I gotta turn off the comm for a sec, guys. Sorry. I need to concentrate.”

“Okay, Kon.” 

“We got this,” Bart tried to sound positive. “We’ve got our Robin.”

As Kon moved to turn it off, Cassie started, “Hey.”

“Huh?” He asked distractedly as his fingers hovered beside the comm’s button.

“We’ll find your boyfriend, Superboy. Don’t worry. Keep calm. Remember that time in Quebec? It sucked, but we all survived, didn’t we?”

“Yeah,” Bart piped in. “This is just like all of our other missions.”

“We’ll find him.” He cringed when he heard his voice crack. “We have to.”

The comm beeped as he clicked it off and he rubbed his forehead where he could feel a headache building up.

“It’s going to be okay,” Kon murmured softly, wishing that Tim could hear his reassurances. “It’s going to be okay, baby.” His eyes squeezed tightly shut. “I swear, I’m going to get you out of here alive.”

Kon suddenly heard a blurb of white noise coming from a walkie-talkie, followed by a voice that didn’t belong to any of the heroes inside of the building. “Code 2398. Code 2398.”

“What’s Code 2398?” Kon asked himself quietly before he heard a pair of guards talking.

“The damn superheroes got in,” one of them growled to the other. “Time to evacuate.” 

The guards that once littered the hallways started moving quickly out of various exits... Kon’s face pinched with confusion when he heard a loud beep before all of the noises around him suddenly became distinctive and clear, lessening the migraine that was starting to build up. He heard a familiar and unmistakable groan coming from his left. _Finally!_ Immediately moving into action, he flew through the empty hallways towards where Tim’s voice was coming from.

As soon as he turned the comm back on to ask the other two if they were seeing the same things as him, Bart and Cassie started talking at the same time. 

“All of the guards are—”

“Did you also—”

“Yeah,” Kon interrupted them. “I hear Red Robin towards the corridors opposite of the entrance and below the building.”

“Go. We’ll take care of everything else,” Cassie promised.

He nodded gravely despite knowing the others couldn’t see, relief flooding him as he came across a stairwell. He could hear heavy breathing and a faint heartbeat coming from a single person inside the room behind it. Bingo.

Kon jumped over the stairs’ railing, landing on the ground in a crouch before leaping up to fly towards the room where Tim was presumably in.

He froze at the doorway, fists clenched at his sides where he stood paralyzed by the sight. He could hear Bart and Cassie rushing through the building to get to where he was, but all he could do was stare at Tim’s limp body that leaned half-heartedly against the wall. The majority of his uniform was torn away, instead showing skin that was littered with wounds and burn marks.

Kon took a breath before he raised a shaky hand to turn his comm again. “I found him, guys.”

“Is he okay?!” Bart’s voice came through the device. 

“No… he doesn’t look like he is.” Kon took an unsteady step towards Tim who’s eyes were closed as his chest heaved. “You guys go finish everything up; I need to get him to help.”

“Are you sure?” Cassie asked worriedly. 

“How bad is it?” 

“Really bad,” Kon replied.

“Okay.” Cassie’s voice strengthened and she cleared her throat. “Kon, make sure our Robin stays alive. Impulse, let’s get this done as soon as possible so we can take care of Red.”

“Roger that.”

“Got it.”

“Su—Superboy?” Tim opened one eye before letting a small smile form on his face. “Hi.” He weakly waved a hand at his boyfriend.

“Hi?” Kon asked incredulously, rushing forward. He reaches out to clutch one of Tim’s hands. “What did they _do_ to you?”

Tim grimaced, sluggishly moving his hands away from Kon’s. “No. Don’t… don’t touch.”

He watched as Tim shifted his hands and Kon immediately lurched away, feeling bile rise into his mouth. They were charred as _hell_ and a horrible smell radiated off them.

Kon had to fight the urge to wrap Tim in a hug, instead staring grimly at all of the slashes across Tim’s body that was seeping blood and his. they look horrifying but Kon couldn’t get himself to look away. 

“Hey,” Tim said softly, wincing as he moving his hands out of Kon’s sight. “Don’t look. It’s not pretty.”

“We need to get you to the tower. Right now. I could fly you, Imp and Wondergirl are finishing up.”

“It’s too late.” Tim’s voice sounded strained.

“What? No, it’s not, Rob. Try to be optimistic. We’ve survived so much worse, haven’t we?”

“As soon as they realized you guys were here, they—they poisoned me, Kon. They left me to _die_ ; they injected me wi—with something.” Tim shifted to show Kon one of his arms where he could see hastily pierced skin. 

“I’m not—” Tim was cut off by a cough. He took several breaths before he continued, “I’m not surviving this, I can tell. Everything… everything hurts and I can just _feel_ my organs shutting down.”

Tim let out a shaky breath. “It’s over.”

“No, baby.” Kon pleaded, bending down and gingerly picking Tim up. Guilt racked his heart when Tim yelped from pain. But he has to do this. So Tim could _live_. “This isn’t happening, you have so much ahead of you. _We_ have so much ahead of us. We haven’t even—”

As he rambled, he quickly flew Tim up the stairs and out the nearest window.

“Hey, now,” Tim wheezed and Kon paused abruptly in the air, staring down at the love of his life paling in his arms. “Once I’m dead—”

“No, Tim. You’re—you’re going to be fine. We’re going to get you fixed up, and you’ll be _fine_.”

“We’re not going to get there in time.” Tim smiled, blood staining his teeth. “Thanks for coming for me, clone boy.”

Looking up, he gently kissed Kon, who winced at the taste of blood. Kon leaned forward, begging for more, but Tim drew back feebly. “Rob? Red Robin?”

Tim’s breathing became even slower, his words sounding like molasses; sounding like he was struggling to get them out. “K—Kon… I…” 

But Tim didn’t finish his sentence, instead exhaling his last breath. His heartbeat slowed to a stop, sounding like a grandfather clock in Kon’s head, echoing before it was gone. Forever. His limbs fell limp around Kon who could only gripTim’s body tighter.

An oppressive silence enveloped Kon. And then he yelled, begging the warm body lying in his arms to respond, “Rob? You what? _What?_ ”

But Tim didn’t wake up, even as Kon flew them down and set him on the ground. No matter how much Kon wanted him to, he wouldn’t wake up.

“Tim, wake up!” Kon shouted, desperately shaking Tim’s shoulders back and forth. “Come ba-back! Please! Tim!”

Kon collapsed beside him, holding Tim’s body to his chest. “Plea-please,” he cried, sobs racking his chest. “I need-I need you. _I love you_. Please wa-wake up. _Please_.”

“Please…” His tears landed on Tim’s face as he wept. 

_Beep_. “Superboy? Impulse and I were able to meet up. Where are you guys?”

“Are you two almost at the tower yet?”

But all he could do was cry, sob as he clutched Tim, wondering if this was how Tim felt when he had died. Did he feel this unbearable pain, this gaping hole in his chest, this unbelievable grief in which he just _can’t_ believe that Tim will never talk to him, hug him, kiss him again? That Tim will never patiently listen to Bart ramble, or never gleefully improv a masterpiece of a plan that Sun Tzu would be proud of?

This was… this was Kon’s fault. Why did he stop? Why didn’t he immediately take Tim to the Tower? So he could _at least_ have had a fighting chance. He failed Tim. _Again._ Guilt curled in his chest as he cradled Tim’s corpse in his arms, knowing that he wasn’t fast enough to save his life.

Kon could hear the other two talking in his ear, asking him something, but he struggled to get himself to respond, unable to do anything but weep into Tim’s shoulder, Tim’s blood seeping onto his own skin. The scarlet red was dripping from his uniform but he couldn’t bring himself to give a damn about it.

“—ello? Kon! What’s going on?” Cassie’s voice sounded panicked. 

“Sorry,” Kon forced the word out of his lips, the action taking more energy than it should.

“Why? Why are you sorry?” Bart asked quiveringly. 

“Sorry.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hmm... I killed him again. Whoops. Maybe I should try to write whump with a happy ending for once. Or at least one that ends without someone dying. Meh, maybe next time.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments and kudos are very appreciated and make me extremely happy, so please consider leaving some if you have time. Have a great day/night, everybody! <3


End file.
